Students plan weekend 'die-in' at Doylestown Art Festival

Friday

Local student activists will hit the Art Festival in Doylestown Borough this weekend with a back-to-school message opposing gun violence.

Many of them won't be of voting age for the midterms this fall. Come Election Day 2019, some still won't be able to cast a ballot.

But for the better part of a year, a group of Bucks County teenagers has been staging school walkouts, plotting popular public marches and blitzing social media in a sustained campaign against the uniquely American topic of school gun violence and the political inaction surrounding the issue.

The young activists of Bucks Students Demand Action say they will return Saturday, the first weekend since many students have gone back to school, to Doylestown Borough to enact their latest display during the well-attended annual Arts Festival.

Just before 1 p.m., the students, expecting at least 40 participants, plan to lie down outside the old county courthouse in a die-in protest, the group says, trading protest signs for backpacks to reinforce their back-to-school message.

“Every year the school year starts and so do the massacres,” declared 17-year-old organizer Gabi Lamb.

Speaking at the site of the planned protest in mid-August, the Central Bucks West senior and three fellow teenage activists who accompanied her, explained how they came together in February, inspired to speak out by the now-famous survivors of the shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

Months later, they rattled off the relevant facts and figures and spoke political messaging strategy with ease.

Don't argue with some who disagrees, said 16-year-old Olivia Mitchell, a student at Council Rock South. Have a conversation.

“You have to carry yourself with authority,” said Fiona Clark, a Doylestown-based 16-year-old student of Pennsylvania Leadership Charter School. “We're not any less competent because we're teenagers.”

They've got policy goals, too.

Atop their list, Mitchell explained, the students aim to revive the expired ban on assault weapons, bolster background check requirements, impose waiting periods on gun purchases to reduce emotion-driven shootings and bar those on the federal no-fly list from buying guns.

The students say they are also seeking the establishment of a gun sale database, the closing of so-called gun show loopholes, demilitarization of police and lifetime disarmament for those convicted of crimes of domestic abuse.

Their fluency in the language of politics and activism comes often as a surprise to adults, they said, leading some to the cynical assessment that teachers have somehow forced the students to adopt or parrot their ideas.

Other detractors, the teens said, have stooped to name-calling, labeling them “sheep” and “Hitler Youth.”

They said their most dismissive critics call them “crisis actors,” a designation born in right-wing internet conspiracy theory circles and applied by users to the victims of mass shootings.

The term has been used to brand victims without evidence as actors responding to fake acts of gun violence motivated by the political goal of neutering the Second Amendment. But like the phrase ”fake news,” it has grown beyond the original definition to more generalized pejorative use.

Such attacks on them have been limited, the teens said. And they push on, focused on their message.

The students of Bucks Students Demand Action say elected officials ignore that message at their own peril.

“We're the next generation of voters. If you're not listening to us, then you're going to lose your job,” Gabi Lamb said.

And the data seems to back them up. According to a CNN report, members of the demographically diverse post-millennial generation are projected to make up 10 percent of the voting population by 2024.

Most endangered by the expected shift is the Republican Party, the report says. Already unpopular with millennials, the GOP's focus under Donald Trump on stirring cultural and racial divides seems to be further alienating many of those on the cusp of voting age.

But that doesn't make them beholden to Democrats. Certainly not the teens in Bucks County, said progressive activist and educator Marlene Pray.

The students who spoke with this news organization credit Pray for helping them organize.

“One thing I appreciate about the Bucks Students Demand Actions kids is they're not a tool or a spoke of the Democratic Party wheel,” Pray said.

Still, they have aligned themselves most readily with Democrats and have cast suspicion at Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, despite the fact he is running for re-election in the 1st Congressional District with support from major groups in favor of gun control.

BSDA points in social media posts to a drafted letter from Fitzpatrick to constituents affirming his belief in concealed-carry reciprocity in the face of his vote against a reciprocity bill.

Those who oppose reciprocity say it would allow gun owners from states with the lowest requirements for concealment to cross state lines and skirt the law with impunity.

Regulations vary from state to state and Pennsylvania, for example, requires gun owners who wish to conceal firearms to obtain a license and pass a background check to do so.

But with different standards in different states, otherwise lawful gun owners can suddenly find themselves in legal jeopardy, including unnecessary felony convictions, say reciprocity supporters.

Mother Jones published the letter in a July article on its website, and said it did not get a response to requests from Fitzpatrick.

On Thursday, Fitzpatrick and his campaign office explained his intent is to raise concealed-carry standards nationwide. He said he wants the reciprocal agreements to hold carriers to a stringent set of standards rather than the lowest, which was not part of the previous legislation. He also was wants language in the reciprocity legislation providing for expanding background checks.

Fitzpatrick said he finds the student activists refreshing, saying they have his support.

“I stand behind everything these kids stand for. Because the biggest problem we have in our democracy is apathy,” he said by phone Thursday from Washington, D.C.

His campaign spokeswoman Genevieve Malandra says Fitzpatrick's opponent, Democrat Scott Wallace, is wrong on the issue of guns, “in the same manner that he’s gone wrong on virtually every other issue.”

Wallace, who places concealed-carry reciprocity among “the most extreme gun rights measures” has also thrown his support behind the students.

"The Bucks Students Demand Action kids — and the Pennridge 225 and March for Our Lives students — have been an inspiration to me,” he said via email Thursday. “While the adults in the room have refused to stand up to the gun lobby, these kids are refusing to stand down in their fight to hold their representatives accountable to protect themselves and their peers.”

Wallace said voters cannot trust Fitzpatrick to take “real action” on gun violence.” He added he plans to attend the students' event Saturday in Doylestown Borough.

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